blog about happiness, positivity and the law of attraction!

Category: psychology

Feelings are wonderful abstract things and where would we be without them? How could we experience happiness, joy or pleasure? Yes, there is the other side to it, the feelings of pain, anger, sadness, but doesn’t these negative feelings also shape who we are? If I take my daughter as an example, she is one and half years old and her mood and feelings change quite quickly within space of few minutes. One minute she may be sad because she is missing her comforter toy and the next minute her favourite music comes on or she discovers a new toy and she is overjoyed. How can I tell that she is happy without knowing what her sadness looks like? Even for myself, how do I know I am really happy without having experienced what sadness feels like?

As adults our feelings and the emotions that they evoke are very complex. Not only we experience a range of emotions from utter joy to despair, but our feelings differ towards the same set of circumstances at different times! Our feelings are very subjective experience and its very person dependent; my feelings may evoke a completely different set of emotional response to someone who is standing next me going through the same experience, whatever it may be, may respond completely differently, depending on their beliefs, values, life experiences and personality.

It was a bad, mad, sad day!

So what has got me thinking about feelings today? Well, for a start, I had a bad day few days back; I had a day where I felt annoyed, sad and drained and I attracted situations that gave me more reasons to be annoyed, sad or feel drained. I tried to shake it off several times by thinking positively, visualising how I want things to go and even practicing gratitude. But alas, things didn’t change and the negative circumstances just kept on coming and by the end of the day, I just really wanted to go to bed and forget about the whole day.

According to law of attraction, we attract what we are thinking into our lives and therefore, at least at a subconscious level, I have chosen to have a bad day or attracted set of circumstances in my life that led to this particular bad day. In hindsight, this was true for me. I was travelling by air that day and I was rather anxious as this was only few days after Germanwings flight went down in France. I couldn’t shake off the sadness that I felt for those involved or the feelings of paranoia that I had over getting on a plane, however mild. Also the holiday I had high hopes for didn’t pan out the way I wanted it to as the holiday destination had bad weather for the whole week and I rather spent way too much time cooped up in the hotel room feeling rather bored.

So as I sat in the airport on our way back home, I knew I am on a verge of starting a bad day and I knew I had to change my thoughts and feelings to more of a positive vibe but I just couldn’t do it. I was trying to think and feel positive, but it really felt like swimming upstream (see below), not natural and very hard work. I just couldn’t shake off my feelings quick enough to make a difference to my day.

Looking back, perhaps this can be explained by Ester Hicks and Jerry Hicks (The Astonishing Power of Emotions):

‘The most common misunderstanding that prevents people from getting control of a situation and gaining their personal balance is the belief that I need to get to where I want to be right now or as quickly as possible. We certainly understand your desire to find the answers to your questions quickly or to solve your problems as fast as you can, but still, that urge works against you. When you feel an urgency to be somewhere else, you are pushing hard against where you are. That is upstream.’

Best thing I could have done that day was to accept my feelings for what they were and what I was feeling at that point in time does not define me as a person. I know ‘this too shall pass’and I know I will have a better day tomorrow because a good night sleep always does wonders. Besides, now that I have been reminded what a bad day feels like, I can perhaps appreciate the next good day when I see it come up!

Feelings and law of attraction

Feelings play an important part in law of attraction; you cannot feel bad and expect to attract good things. The more pro-longed the negative feelings, the more difficult it would be change them. For example, if you feel you don’t have enough money, chances are you will attract situations where you will not have enough money, it doesn’t matter how you earn. Same also goes for health. If you always felt unhappy about your body for example, how can you attract the body you want? In order for law of attraction to work for you, you must change your feelings towards your body first; you must learn to be happy with it in the first place.

Now, I know this from first-hand experience, this is easily said than done and you cannot instantly change your feelings. Your programming about self-image perhaps took good few years to achieve, so it’s unrealistic to think these feelings will disappear overnight, unlike my bad day. Changes to feelings take time, especially if they are strongly rooted feelings, but the good thing is once our feelings are in tune with what we want, and then changing our thoughts become matter of fact. Feelings can be strong enablers to make law of attraction work for you, but changing feelings and associated emotions can be hard work and with practice, feelings too, in time, can be changed and mastered.

Personal experiment….Pear-drop pendent!

On holiday, I had a perfect example of how law of attraction worked for me which I wanted to share. I would describe myself as a careless person when it comes to my personal possessions, which I have always been okay with, because I had learned at a very early age, whatever material things I loose, it can always be replaced. So on holiday, I managed to lose a gold pear-drop pendent that I had on a chain. I looked around everywhere for it and since I had walked around a lot on that particular day; I could only go back to some of the places to look for it.

That night, I visualised finding the pendent. Then I didn’t think much about it after that and certainly did not stress about it, as I know it can be replaced if need to be. I held it very lightly in my mind and that’s about it. The last day, as we were leaving the hotel, I was tidying up and as I looked under my daughter’s cot, there it was I had found the pendent.

This is a very small example, and some people may just describe it as a coincidence or even lucky, but for me, when it was meant to work out, it felt right, almost like swimming downstream rather than upstream. This may sound contradictory, but if I really wanted to find it and I was stressed in my search for it, then it’s very likely that negative thoughts and feelings would have kicked in. ‘What if I can’t find it? It’s lost forever.’ Chances are once the urgency for finding the pendent and the fear of losing it forever kicks in I would have attracted the pendent to be lost forever. That is the simple fact of law of attraction; whatever you think or feel the most that is what you will attract into your life. So there is a case for holding whatever you want lightly in your mind, rather than wanting it so badly you start feeling the fear of not getting what you want.

I think it is about time that I shared my personal story and my experiences with law of attraction. Let me start by making a very optimistic statement first. I live a healthy, wealthy and happy life and I know I have a bright future ahead of me. Those around me with a critical eye may not agree, but for me this is my truth and my view of life. In the past I have been described as ‘seeing the world though rose tinted glasses’ and more often than not, I would describe myself as an optimist. However, there have been many cross roads in my life, reflecting back, that were challenging to say the least, but the future, in my view, is always bright.

Optimism does have a role in the law of attraction. In a world where ‘like attracts like’, positive attitudes will attract positive results. If you are always expecting things to go wrong or can spot the flaws in events more readily than appreciating the merits, then chances are that there will always be more flaws in the world around you. Being an optimist doesn’t mean that you go through life oblivious to unhappiness, but you are more likely to accept the unhappiness and know that it will pass and things will get better.

Although genetics have a part in play in someone being an optimist or pessimist, large parts of being optimist is learning though life and life situations that have shaped you. Being optimistic is an attitude and like any attitude, you can change it, all it takes is a bit of work on your mind and state of being.

My beginnings…

My early childhood was spent in the midst of a civil war. Looking back, there are several points in my childhood where I was in real danger, hiding in bunkers, being caught in aerial assaults, and being exposed to death and destruction very early on. I remember one particular incident, when I was around eight years old; we were hiding in a school, in the ground floor toilets no less, as it was the most concrete covered area of a school. That night, due to particular bought of heavy fighting and cross fire, 27 people lost their lives on the floor above us and this memory is particularly etched into my head as I had to walk past the 27 bodies the following morning to be moved to another part of the building for safety. The reason I am sharing this is that I can see in many points in my life, where things could have gone horribly wrong for me, not just in terms of physical injury, but mentally.

In the 1990s, my family moved to the UK to get away from the war and my teenage years were spent in council accommodation, with my parents working 2 more jobs at a time. In comparison to some of those around me now, my work colleagues in the banking sector to some of my privately educated friends, my upbringing is rather modest. But for me I knew that I am living a very privilege life, from a very early age because of my experiences in childhood and this is important part of my learned optimism.

My journey and law of attraction

There have been times in my life when negativity would overcome me, lasting days and months, but the inner voice in me, always knows that ‘this too shall pass’ and eventually my life would return to normal. First few months of my marriage and when my husband and I started living together were a prime example of turbulent times in my life. When I did come across the law of attraction, a year or so after marriage, everything made sense to me. I have attracted the negativity in my life and in my relationship by the way I was thinking, feeling and acting. Knowing Law of attraction is one thing, but putting it into action can be difficult, especially when you have been conditioned to think logically though out your life. I was able to practice the law of attraction little by little and when I started seeing positive results, it reinforced my beliefs.

Over the years, my husband and I have built a strong relationship because we were able to overcome our initial differences and I often put this down to my attitude change and renewed optimism. In the last few years, I often find that it’s my optimism towards my personal relationships that need the most work, especially when coupled with arrival of a new baby and sleepless nights. Often when you suffer from sleep deprivation, it is difficult to be optimistic, let alone having time to think about the law of attraction. But the optimist in me knew that even the sleepless nights, ‘that too shall pass’.

Now a days, even if I am fully versed in the law of attraction, I have days of negativity, often when dealing with difficult people in work place or social situations, but I snap out of it relatively quickly so that I don’t attract too many of the negative fears that were running though my head. I know that one of the basic facts of life is that you cannot change others; you can only change the way your react to others. The two pieces of thoughts that have really helped me with maintaining relationships is that (a) treat others the way you want to be treated; (b) loving yourself – filling yourself with love in order to attract more love in your life.

I know I have a lot more to learn in this journey though law of attraction and I am grateful for myself to have taken the first steps towards it.

“the only journey is the journey within” – Rainer Maria Rilke

Those who are reading this blog, thank you! I am truly grateful to share my journey with you.

“It is not happy people who are thankful, it is thankful people who are happy” – author unknown

What is gratitude?

Gratitude is a feeling of thankfulness; an expression of appreciation or it can even be described as an emotion, a feeling of happiness that comes from appreciation. Some may describe gratitude as an attitude, a mood or even a personality trait, often those who practice gratitude regularly having better resilience to adversity, increased well-being and increased general happiness.

In Law of Attraction, it’s one of the key enablers of happiness and a powerful process in purposefully creating the life you want. Gratitude features in most world religions, from Christianity to Islam and even features heavily on most self-improvement books. It is generally accepted in the field of positive psychology that being thankful to what you have is one of the top enablers to lead a happy and fulfilling life. Many studies have linked practicing gratitude to increased well-being and reduced states such as stress and depression. This is not really much of a surprise. Knowing what you have, and appreciating it, helps to acknowledge how fortunate you are. It gives you a different perspective than always wanting more and more. Of course, there is nothing wrong with wanting more, but starting that process from a place of gratitude will set you up on a more positive point.

Gratitude and Positive psychology studies

One of the popular ways to practice gratitude, and to really enjoy the benefits of gratitude this should be an on-going practice, is to keep a ‘Gratitude Journal’; writing down the things you are grateful on a regular basis. A research study by Emmons & McCullough found that keeping “counting one’s blessings” journal, a conscious focus on blessings, can lead to improved psychological and physical functioning. In this particular study, they examined the practice of gratitude by asking participants to keep weekly or daily journals and had control groups who kept journals of hassles and events of the week / day. Those who participated in gratitude journal writing had substantial and consistent improvement to well-being and general feeling of life satisfaction.

Studies such as the one conducted by Dr Martin Seligman, where the participants in his studies embarked on writing a gratitude letter to someone who they never really thanked properly for their kindness and delivering the letters personally, led to huge increases in happiness scores and effects lasted as long as a month. Other studies have focused on relationships and how gratitude can impact on them. A study by Sara Algoe (University of North Carolina) found that grateful couples not only had more satisfaction in their relationships, but more likely to be in their relationships nine months later.

Gratitude and Law of Attraction

When you have a universe that is responding not just to your actions, but also your thoughts and feelings, gratitude can play a powerful part in creating a fulfilling life. But how does Law of attraction respond to gratitude? Essentially it comes down to having higher energy levels and being in positive frame of mind. So in a ‘like attract like’ universe, you will attract higher energy situations leading to more happiness. Gratitude creates abundance as gratitude is a thought or feeling of having ‘enough’ as opposed to ‘not having enough’. In law of attraction, a mind-set of not having enough will lead to attracting a life of not having enough, a life of scarcity.

One of the tools in ASK; BELIEVE and RECEIVE process is to write each of your wish or intension as thanks as though you have already received what you have wished for (‘I am so grateful for …….’). This creates a positive feeling and a higher energy point for the universe to respond to. The catch here is that you really have to BELIEVE what you are ASKING for will be RECEIVED or manifested.

“If the only prayer you said was thank you, that would be enough.” ― Meister Eckhart

Gratitude: Practice makes it perfect!

How do you practice gratitude? There are many tools and techniques that so many researchers and great thinkers have come up with and here are my favourite few.

Gratitude journal – writing down what you are grateful for on a daily / weekly basis. 3 to 5 points is often enough but the key is to keep it up regularly.

Thank you note or letter – just like in Dr Seligman’s experiment, writing a note to someone for their kindness. Studies have shown you don’t even have to deliver the letter, but writing it in the first place has benefits.

Showing your appreciation and saying thank you (and meaning it!) – The word ‘thank you’ can go a long way in cultivating positive relationships, whether that is with your partner or your colleagues. How about telling a loved one why you are thankful for having them in your life.

Being Mindful – noticing and appreciating the small things in life; a beautiful sunny day or a smile from a stranger. When you become mindful and take notice of moments, you get a profound appreciation for the bigger picture, which is often your life in general.

Gratitude prayer – for those who are religious as well as those who haven’t quite made up their mind, a prayer or counting your blessing intrinsically can help to practice gratitude.

My first personal (open) experiment was to attract a part time charity role into my life. This was the most logical step for me to move onto, using my skills to help my passion of animal welfare. I have heard back from the specific charity I was intending attract and it was not so good news. So does that mean Law of Attraction didn’t work for me in this case? Actually it was a bit more complex than that.

I used the tools and techniques I have learned over the years to set a clear intend (via the ASK, BELIEVE and RECEIVE process) as well as visualisation techniques to imagine what it would be like to have got the role. I imagined sitting in the board room talking about animal welfare issues and interacting with other trustees of the charity. At times, I was convinced that I receive this particular role as I can really see myself actually doing the role. But there were times when my inner voice was throwing out doubts; ‘since I have declared it so publically, what happens if it doesn’t work out?!’; ‘can I really spend the time to do this role this year?!’; ‘what about the time I spend with my daughter, will this be affected?!.

If I clearly self-analyse, then it was deeper emotional triggers such as fear and confusion, that was getting in the way of my belief of getting this role. Question is how do I get around these emotional triggers or more to the point, do I really want to get over these emotional triggers? Perhaps they are trying to tell me something; maybe my heart is really not into it, at least for the moment, until my daughter grows up a bit more.

So perhaps going back to my example about exams, do I give up or do I persist? So again the voice in my head is telling me, I must persist and when the time is right, and the role is right, it will come to me!

A true believer of Law of Attraction believes that the universe can help you to attract what you desire in your life. However, many believers still struggle to receive their desired outcome and this is often down to that fact that there are too many thoughts and emotions happening to us at a subconscious level, which is often difficult to control. To influence this, one of the main techniques used is ‘visualisation’. Creating images in your brain of what it would be like to have achieved your goal or your desired outcome. Using your imagination to create vivid, colourful pictures and imagining what success looks like and feels like, you bring the future into the present moment. This creates more of a powerful magnet than just intending though thought processes.

This type of visualisation should help to bring thoughts, feelings, words and emotions and actions in line with your outcome. In the ASK, BELIEVE, RECEIVE 3 step process, visualisation helps with the BELIEVE step, by giving a tool that tune your thoughts to think what it would be like when you have received it. By imagining you have achieved your outcome, you are removing doubt and negativity and attracting the outcome into your life.

For psychologists, visualisation is nothing new. Visualisation is used for goal setting in the corporate world, in treatment of patients in behavioural therapies, visualisation is used as a means of control in an uncontrollable situation and even in world of sports visualisation plays a big part in outcomes. Great sports personalities such as Andy Murray, Wayne Rooney and Jessica Ennis-Hill regularly performs visualisation sessions before games to achieve their goals. For example, when Jonny Wilkinson (one of England’s best rugby union players), is required to kick for goal, he uses a visualisation routine to help him put the ball between the posts: “I visualise the ball travelling along that path and imagine the sensation of how the ball is going to feel when it hits my foot for the perfect strike.”(The Telegraph, UK) Psychology and Law of Attraction are not mutually exclusive; there are a lot of synergies between Law of Attraction and Psychology, particularly in relation to Positive Psychology (see below). Positive psychology and law of attraction are like the two sides of the same coin, a coin that has been placed on table, with one side up and other side hidden. It is easier to work with Positive Psychology as it’s the known, proven side, while with Law of Attraction, is like the hidden side of the coin, you know it exists, but you just cannot see it!

Is Law of Attraction a version of Positive Psychology?

What is Positive Psychology? A rather newish area of scientific study of Psychology, developed in the 1990’s, focused on the belief that ‘people want to lead meaningful and fulfilling lives, to cultivate what is best within themselves, and to enhance their experiences of love, work, and play’(from Positive Psychology Center, Penn). Positive psychologists are concerned with four topics: (1) positive experiences, (2) enduring psychological traits, (3) positive relationships and (4) positive institutions.

From socio-psychological point of view, focus on Positive Psychology is often beneficial, given that as humans we have something called a ‘negative bias’; a negative thought or emotion will have much more of an impact on a person’s behaviour and cognition, compared to something equally positive. This is an evolutionary trait which has helped our ancestors to survive their harsh environment by helping them to be more tuned into the dangers and pitfalls that surrounded them, rather be concerned with more positive emotions such as happiness and joy. This isn’t to say that our ancestors were very unhappy people, but more to the fact that given their fight for survival, they were less focused on pursuit of happiness.

Positive psychology topics such as self-belief, enduring psychological traits such as resilience to adversity and how you manage your relationships, also play an important part in law of attraction. You cannot have persistence pessimistic thoughts and expect the law of attraction to work in your favour. Same goes for resilience, if visualisation and other techniques don’t work, then do you give up or do you persist? While Advocators of Law of Attraction may say visualisation and positive statements enable the universe to attract a solution into your life, while psychologist may describe visualisation and positive statements as a tool for the subconscious mind to focus and look for creative ways of problem solving. But in both cases, there are greater chances of success than when there is no pre-thought out goal or outcome. We are very social creatures and human interactions and relationships play a big part in our wellbeing, happiness and to enable us to live a fulfilling life.

One thing all psychologist and law of attraction believers will agree on is that you cannot change someone without them wanting to change themselves. So how you manage your relationships is quite important as the only person who you have control over is yourself. Law of attraction encourages filling your mind with positivity and love for yourself and well as those around you. Be grateful for everything you have and be thankful for all the love and connections you have in your life. I don’t think any psychologist, positive or otherwise, would disagree with that. Loving yourself is a really important step to building great relationships with others. After all, if you cannot love yourself, how can you expect others to do so?!

Is Law of Attraction merely a result of focus?

The ability for us to pay particular attention to the task at hand, and ignore other distractions is what we describe as focus. It is generally accepted in the field of psychology that the more focused we are, the more successful we will be at reaching our goals. So I have to ask myself, is Law of Attraction merely a focus tool? The more we think about something, the more we visualise, the more attention we bring to something, therefore we succeed at it. Out prefrontal cortex, just behind our forehead is working hard on our behalf to manage behaviour, helping us to prioritise and focus. For example, I want to succeed in my exam, so I devote more and more time on it. I visualise myself achieving it and, I actually study, ignore any other distractions. My increased focus and attention on my exams meant that I actually pass the exams. Does that mean it was Law of Attraction that worked in this case or was it purely my ability to focus?!

I think the answer is bit more complex than saying it was the Law of Attraction or it was purely my focus and hard work. You cannot expect law of attraction to work, if you decided you will leave it up to the universe and not study! Your thoughts may be asking to pass the exams, but your conscious actions (which cannot happen without thought process), is doing the opposite. This is a bit like the story of the poor Italian man who prayed and prayed to win the lottery, but didn’t buy a lottery ticket (see ‘Science and Law of Attraction’ below).

Focus and hard work also has a role to play, but there is also something else at play. For example, some people seem to breeze through life, whether its exams, career, wealth, family etc., it comes quite naturally to them, while others, it doesn’t matter how hard they seem to study, focus on career, try to attain wealth, its hard work. They do achieve their goals, but it really is an uphill battle. Think of all the high achievers you have come across. Not just those achieve successes in the work place or in a business, but those who really seem to succeed in life and seem genuinely happy. They may not have everything, but they are happy with what they have and they have an air of confidence about them. You often find that these individuals do not go after their goals; their goals follow them, like attracting circumstances and success. What do these individuals do that is different from the ‘battlers’?! Lot of it does come down to attitude, self-belief and clarity on what they actually want. It’s almost like the battlers expect a battle and it becomes a battle, often their goals changing part way though. While, the high achievers have a different attitude to life than most others and tend to view the bigger picture and a clear vision of what can be achieved and what they expect of themselves and others. At this point, sceptics would argue that of course it’s not focus alone, but also having the right attitude and have a clear goal is the key to success, not some unexplained universal force.

Coincidences vs. Purposeful attraction

One of the hard facts to ignore in the arguments for Law of Attraction is all the reported achievements and successes that focus, attitude and clear goal setting alone cannot explain. For example, people like Eddie Coronado (Manifest your Millions) and Cynthia Stafford (California Mega Millions), who claimed to have won millions on the lottery by using law of attraction. Although lottery winners are far and few in between, there are also other instances where people claim to attract the right person at the right time, attracting sequence of events, chance meeting that lead to successes, other words, increased coincidences which lead to a particular desired outcome.

I have personally also experienced this, coming across the right information or direction at the right time when I was intensely thinking about something. Great example for me is that, I always wanted to write; I have always written diaries which always help to clarify my thoughts, but I always wanted to publish something, hopefully something meaningful. And I have been thinking intensely about this recently. Then a random chance meeting with someone led me to start this blog. The conversation I had was just a 5 minute conversation, with a passing remark about blogs, but it gave me my ‘light-bulb’ moment. I may have started a blog further down the track by my own accord, but that meeting and that conversation gave me a feeling of ‘right’ action at the ‘right’ time. Other examples in my life include meeting people who I haven’t met in a while, but I would have thought about them not so long ago. For me, it is harder for me to say these are mere coincidence and focus. Attitude, self-belief and goal setting certainly don’t explain it!

“Coincidences are not accidents but signals from the universe which can guide us toward our true destiny” Deepak Chopra